Untitled (Figure with red face at upper left corner)
56 x 56 inches
1991
Mixed media assemblage
SSP 108
Untitled (2 Owls at top, Paul Bunyan figure)
50 x 39 inches
1994
Mixed media assemblage
SSP 140
Untitled (Religious figures in middle)
55 ½ x 36 inches
1994
Mixed media assemblage
SSP 142
Untitled (Cross-shaped figure in center, gold butterfly at upper left corner)
51 x 27 inches
1994
Mixed media assemblage
SSP 144
Untitled (Assemblage with seashells)
23 x 21 ½ inches
1994
Mixed media assemblage
SSP 154
Simon Sparrow (1925-2000) was an American folk artist, a painter and mixed media artist who was born in West Africaand grew up in North Carolina on a Cherokee Reservation. He was a self-taught artist and received a Wisconsin Visual Art Lifetime Achievement Award (WVALAA) in 2012.
Simon Sparrow began creating art at age seven and also began his practice of informal and street preaching in his youth. He moved to Philadelphia and enlisted in the army in 1942. He later moved to New York before settling in Madison, Wisconsin.
Sparrow is best known for his mixed media constructions and paintings, which he began creating once he moved to Madison, Wisconsin in the 1970s. On 20 May 2012, Sparrow was posthumously awarded a WVALAA along with 13 other honorees.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
1994 Carl Hammer Gallery, Chicago, IL
1991 Janet Fleisher Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
1989 Carl Hammer Gallery, Chicago, IL
1988 Carl Hammer Gallery, Chicago, IL
1986 Carl Hammer Gallery, Chicago, IL
1985 Phyllis Kind Gallery, Chicago, IL
1983 Carl Hammer Gallery, Chicago, IL
Madison Art Center, Madison, WI
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
1993 Wisconsin Triennial, Madison Arts Center, Madison, WI
1992 Religious Visionaries: Simon Sparrow/ Mary Le Ravin, Carl Hammer Gallery, Chicago, IL
1991 Material Redemptions, Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC
Images in Black: Memory and Spirit in African-American Art,
Carl Hammer Gallery, Chicago, IL
Religious Visionaries, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI
Evidence of Spirit, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL
1990 Wisconsin Triennial, Madison Arts Center, Madison, WI
1989 Structure and Surface: Beads in Contemporary American Art,
John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI
From Impulse to Obsession: A Living Wisconsin Tradition, Madison Art
Center, Madison, WI
American Primitive Gallery, New York, NY
Natasha Nicholson Gallery, Madison, WI
Dean Jensen Gallery, Milwaukee, WI
1988 Outsider Artists: The Black Experience, Carl Hammer Gallery, Chicago, IL
Structure and Surface: Beads in Contemporary American Art, Renwick
Gallery, National Museum of Art at the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC
From Mud to Blood, Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY
1987 Carl Hammer Gallery, Chicago, IL
Mia Gallery, Seattle, WA
Primitivo Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Materializers, Janet Fleisher Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
Wisconsin Triennial, Madison Arts Center, Madison, WI
1986 Carl Hammer Gallery, Chicago, IL
Mia Gallery, Chicago, IL
1985 Masterpieces in Contemporary American Folk Art, Janet Fleisher Gallery,
Philadelphia, PA
Religious Visionaries, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI
1984 Black Folk Art in America, Carl Hammer Gallery, Chicago, IL
Wisconsin Directions 4, Madison Art Center, Madison, WI
African Insights: Sources of Afro-American Art and Culture, The Field
Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL
Black Folk Artists of America, Bethel College, St. Paul, MN
Artists of the Black Experience, University of Illinois, Chicago, IL
Ricco Johnson Gallery, New York, NY